Final Cut Pro X + NEXIS | PRO

[Bill Davis]

[Simon Ubsdell] “I’m not at all sure I understand how you think “metadata about stored ranges” relates to the question of shared storage.

Could you elaborate?”

Sure Simon.

My central understanding of how X operates is that it looks for mounted volumes and applies everything in it’s system to those as metadata instructions. That includes it’s abstractions of Events, Projects, et al.

So I would presume that in order to share things in any networked share system, you’re still going to be leaving the Volume data intact on the server side, and dealing exclusively in exchange of user defined metadata.

In the AVID system, (if I understand it correctly) the central construct of project sharing appears to be BINS – which reside one or two levels below the volume level.

Bin locking makes sense to me with users basically “checking out” those mostly “fixed” bins in order to work collaboratively. a Bins content and configuration won’t change much during the editorial process.

With the X keyword system, it seems kinda unreasonable to expect users to protect and “check out” it’s equievlent organizational construct: keyword ranges. Unlike “bins” containing discrete clips keywords keyword ranges. These are VERY different from bins. I’d characterize them as “live” where a Bin is mostly “fixed.” If all the network editors in an X system are constantly re-configuring keywords, creating and deleting keyword ranges and auto-generating Smart Collections constantly. – so there’s no fixed “basic” structure to share as there is in the AVID approach.

So the very concepts of “shared storage operation” that might be useful in an AVID world – doesn’t really work in an X environment. You’d need something new.

If I’m incorrect about any of this, somebody please help me out.

And I can’t emphasize it enough, I’m NOT any kind of network sharing expert. FAR from it.

I’m just trying to figure out what an X style “project sharing” might look like in the future.

Certainly ALL the metadata is there in X. The database in X must be PRECISELY what makes all sharing systems possible. What seems to be missing is a way to translate how X “thinks” about describing it’s media (keywords and magnetic storylines) into what the older system users are looking for.

Also, the Apple X development system is often less focused on re-creating what people already expect – and more focused on doing what Apple does best – which is allow it’s team to jettison rigid historic structures IF they become convinced that doing so can provide their users real benefits.

I suspect their customer teams doing shared workflows in X right now are mostly “modularized” with discrete teams working on individual projects – that while sourced from and stored on a central server, don’t try to propagate the shared project itself across the server the same way that an AVID Isis system might?

Sorry for yet another long post. I’m trying to learn here so please, if I have any of this wrong, somebody correct me.

FWIW.

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

[Charlie Austin]

[Simon Ubsdell] “And that of course is a major stumbling block if you work in a sector where clients require your edit machines to be never connected to the internet.”

Yep. There is a local backup version of the project we eventually found hidden deep in an obscure directory, but yeah, no internet, no team sharing.

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~ My FCPX Babbling blog ~
~\”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.\”~
~I still need to play Track Tetris sometimes. An old game that you can never win~
~\”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented\”~

[Simon Ubsdell]

[Bill Davis] “Bin locking makes sense to me with users basically “checking out” those mostly “fixed” bins in order to work collaboratively. a Bins content and configuration won’t change much during the editorial process.”

“Checking out” isn’t really the right term to use for the AVID method as it implies a barrier to the process which isn’t there in practice.

Bins get changed all the time, not least because they contain the sequences you and others are cutting, but also they change because they are acquiring new media as the project progresses.

[Bill Davis] “So the very concepts of “shared storage operation” that might be useful in an AVID world – doesn’t really work in an X environment. You’d need something new.”

Yes, I would agree with this. I thought you were implying that there was something about the way that FCP X handles metadata that facilitated a future sharing process – rather than that it was an obstacle to it.

Simon Ubsdell
tokyo productions
hawaiki

[Myron Vazquez]

Oliver,

Team projects are similar but not exactly the same minus the streaming server component. Anywhere tech is used with more added in. You do need to be a CC Enterprise user.

>>>Using Team Projects (Beta)

Team Projects is a hosted collaboration service for CC enterprise users that allows editors and motion graphics artists to work simultaneously in shared team projects within Adobe Premiere Pro CC, After Effects CC and Adobe Prelude CC. It includes deep collaboration features like version control and smart conflict resolution. Instead of creating local project files, collaborators can work together in a shared team project that can be opened by Premiere Pro, After Effects or Prelude. The data in Team Projects is securely hosted in the cloud. Media files referenced by Team Projects can be locally stored source files, or lightweight proxies shared via Creative Cloud or another cloud service or on-premise storage location.

Sharing projects across workgroups and workstations has never been easier with Team Projects. To learn more, see https://www.adobe.com/go/teamprojects.

>>>Get latest changes from collaborators

You are notified whenever collaborators share changes via a small badge on the assets thumbnail either when you are using the icon view or the Status column available in List view. At the same time, the Get Latest Changes icon in the Team Project panel lights up. You can either click the Get Latest Changes arrow or choose Edit > Team Project > Get Latest Changes. Any changes made by your collaborators are then synchronized and made available to you in a new version in your sandbox.

~Myron

[Oliver Peters]

[Simon Ubsdell] “[Bill Davis] “Bin locking makes sense to me with users basically “checking out” ….”

Bins get changed all the time, not least because they contain the sequences you and others are cutting, but also they change because they are acquiring new media as the project progresses.”

Bill, I do corporate on-site editing on occasion like you. Avid sharing is often discussed in terms of TV shows and feature films, but here’s an example that’s closer to home. On a recent backstage gig, I worked as part of a team of 4 editors on Avid shared storage. 3 of us on Media Composer and the 4th on Premiere Pro. I was running a MP tower with connected Avid i/o and everyone else was on a laptop. Most of my time was involved in media management – live capture of the general sessions, ingest of KiPro back-ups and clean feeds, and ingest of camera cards from various crews. My editing was mainly the cleanup and export of the general sessions for the web. The other 3 editors were cutting interviews, highlights, candids, etc.

We were all working within the same Media Composer project. Since the media was ingested using Avid AMA (direct media access w/o conversion to optimized Avid MXF media) and lived on the same shared storage in its native form, the Premiere editor could access these files and do some prep to feed material to one of the other editors working in Media Composer. The bottom line was that all 3 of the MC editors were working in one common project file, yet the connected Premiere editor also had access to files. Everything got archived in a matching volume/folder structure to an external drive, so the production company could library that. (The Avid storage was a rental.) Down the road, all they had to do was restore the Avid media files and project and everything would be there. The point of this is so that everything for the gig is contained within a single master project. No need to chase down a bunch of different project files when you go back to it 6 months later.

In the project, things were organized into bins for media, working bins for the various types of deliverables, and so on. In Avid sharing, the first person to open a bin “owns” it, meaning they have read/write authority, while everyone else has read-only privileges. If Editor A opens a bin and makes changes, once that editor saves, the bin is updated. The other editors see those updates by closing and re-opening the bins. Therefore, the optimum approach is to have designated edit bins based on projects or editors with separate bins for raw media. Works like a charm, when everyone understands the system. It’s this structure that seems like it could be adapted by Apple and applied to FCPX Events.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com

[Oliver Peters]

[Oliver Peters] “Under the current software version, two editors can simultaneously open and edit in one project. Unfortunately, they cannot see the other’s changes and when either one saves, it will overwrite any work done by the other editor. Adobe Anywhere might fix this, but it is designed as a cloud solution, which many shops don’t want.”

Well… A slight correction, courtesy of Bob Russo’s Part 1 video:

https://www.avidblogs.com/collaborate-with-avid-nexis-pro-on-third-party-software-part-1-adobe-premiere/

Premiere now offers “project locking”, which I had completely missed.

EDIT: I just tested this today on a AFP-mounted SAN volume. It doesn’t work part of the time, so it seems unreliable. Bottom line, with Premiere, don’t have two editors open the same project from a SAN.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com